Beauty Out of Heartbreak

I am going to tell you a story.

A few years ago, I met someone.  We - from my perspective - really hit it off.  But the relationship was strictly professional, and while I flirted in my own way (i.e. not obvious at all), no action was taken on either side.

I was infatuated with him.  I thought about him every day.  Meeting him had changed me to what felt like a radical degree.  Whereas before I met him, I played it cautious, I wasn't spontaneous, I didn't care about being in a relationship with anyone.  But after I met him, I would go drive for the sake of driving.  I went skydiving.  I went hiking and adventuring alone.  Mostly done for bragging rights to have something to tell him when we saw each other, but also because he made me feel wild and reckless.

He was also the first person in my life where I could picture myself settling down.  Being committed.  Starting a family.

It took me years to admit this, but yes: I was in love with him.


As I said though...nothing ever came from what I felt.

Instead, I secretly pined for him.  Hoped against hope I would run into him around town, outside of the workplace.  That he would see me on social media and suddenly want to get to know me more.

It never happened.
He didn't know how I felt until, a few weeks before I moved hundreds of miles away, I told him something along the lines of how I wouldn't have minded if something had happened between us.  But at this point, he had a girlfriend for several months and was pretty committed to her.  I wasn't trying to break them up, but rather create some closure for myself.


I left with a broken heart.


Even though I was hundreds of miles away, I still thought of him.  I was unhealthily obsessive in checking social media to see if he posted something, or to see if he "liked" anything I had posted to my account.  I kept hoping against hope that maybe something would happen, and he would realise that we were "meant" to be (even though I readily admit, there is no such thing).

One day, he posted to his social media account (which wasn't very often at all).  He had proposed to his girlfriend.  They were engaged.  I saw this on my lunch break at work, and my heart sank.  That was it.  Game over.

I drove to my other job after I got off work, and met up with a man I had been spending time with.  He left me for a few minutes to go get coffee, and when he came back, he saw the tears I had meant to conceal, and insisted in his caring way that I tell him what was wrong.  What had happened.  So I shared a brief recap of everything.


Fast forward a few weeks.

This man I has been spending more and more time with became my boyfriend.  I was still nursing the wound of a broken heart, but this man knew that.  He cared for me.  He wanted to be alongside me in my road to getting better, both emotionally and in regards to my mental health.

Over time, we grew to love each other.  We quickly became best friends, not just boyfriend and girlfriend.  We went on adventures.  We admired the beauty of nature together.  We fought.  We reconciled.  We learned to adapt with each other.  We fought to keep our relationship strong.


And now?

Here we are.

Living thousands of miles away from where we first met.  Married.  Happy.  Working on strengthening our marriage, on growing closer, on changing (for the better).  Fighting for our marriage.


This morning I thought about the other man I was in love with.  I imagined what it would be like to be married to him.  And you know what?  I couldn't see it.  That is to say, I could see it, but it was a dead end.  It would have amounted to nothing.

Because nothing can compare to the man I married.  The man I am committed to for life.  The man who is my best friend, who is the love of my life, the man I cannot wait to start a family with.

This man has the biggest and kindest heart of anyone I know.  He loves me unconditionally.  He is humble, willing to admit when he's wrong, and willing to change for the better.  He knows the struggles I face and instead of telling me to look him up when I've figured it out, he has embraced walking by my side, supporting me, holding me up through the storms, and helping me walk a path towards getting better.  He is walking alongside me as we both figure out what a relationship with God looks like, and how we should be living.  He takes care of me, he cares for me, and he loves me.  Period.
There is absolutely no match for that.  There is no match for the man that he is.  For all that we've been through and fought through.  I cannot see myself with anyone else.  I do not want to be with anyone else.  If soulmates were really a thing, he would be mine.  I have chosen him, and will continue to choose him every day of my life.  I have loved him with all my heart, and will continue to love him as fiercely and as strongly as I am capable of.


There is beauty that comes after heartbreak.
It may take a while.
It may take years.

It's not worth it to go around and try to fill the cracks of your shattered heart with other relationships.  Or other ephemeral things.  Rather, in the meantime, be content with being alone.  Try to find out who you are.  In this way, you can help the person who will eventually come along, get to know you as well as you know yourself.

There is a difference between being alone and being lonely.
Don't be afraid to be alone.

A broken heart is a struggle.
It is pain and sorrow and sickness and unrest.
But give it time.
Give yourself a little grace.
Be patient.
Wait.


It's worth it.

Trauma

I have been thinking about trauma a lot recently.

I have never thought of myself as a person who has experience trauma.  In fact, up until the past year or so, if you asked me if I ever thought I experienced trauma in my life, I would have answered quickly with a "no."  But that has changed.

This fact didn't even register with me as it was occurring, but back when I lived in southern California, I was going to therapy.  And it was helping.  A few short months before I moved, my therapist started doing EMDR therapy with me.  And it wasn't until I moved and had stopped going to therapy and had time to think (finally), that I then realised...EMDR therapy is usually performed on people who have experienced trauma in their lives.

I won't get into specifics, but my therapist and I focused on my junior high years.  Years that were, obviously, imperative to my growth both mentally and physically.  Things that happened that I had no control over left me with a lot of issues that I am only now uncovering.


The thing is, is that I can't talk to my family about this.  Because it involves them.  To a certain degree, at least.  My parents did the best they could; they did what they thought was good for me.  My siblings all have their own ideas and perspectives on how we were all raised, so what may have been a horrible experience for me, was a happy memory for them.  After all, perspective determines reality.

I don't even dare mention the possibility that I may have gone through trauma as I was transitioning from an adolescent to an adult.  The mindset(s) I walk away from with my family is that if I talk about something too much, I use it as a crutch.  Or it's just the influence of "the world" that is making me think I experienced trauma; not that I actually experienced trauma.

But that's the thing...who I am...who are they...to tell my brain any differently?

You see, I struggle with this.
Because the signs are there.  The things I feel now.  The way I handle life.  All the repercussions of how I was raised/treated as a child.  The fact that my therapist felt the necessity to walk me through that kind of therapy in order to help me walk through trauma I lived through but had no idea I lived through it.

If I mention it to anyone in my [immediate] family, they will most likely think I'm exaggerating or making it out worse than it actually was (again, from their perspective, maybe it wasn't), but...it's there, right?  I am now dealing with things that I had no control over when I was a child, and it has majorly fucked me over, despite my parents doing what they thought was best.


And I cannot bring this up to my parents.  I don't want to say "hey, you did this because you thought it was the right approach, but it fucked my brain up and you actually traumatized me."  That would wound them beyond repair.


How ironic.
That for the entirety of our lives, we are still the children of our parents, and even in our adult years they do their best to shield and protect us.  And yet, as we continue to age and live as adults, we - in turn - try to protect and shield them.

(Yet another topic for another time.)



And then...
An incident happens.
One you can't really tell people about.

But you felt so utterly alone, so completely abandoned, yet you know what you saw, and the results come back normal, but you know what you saw.  And you keep thinking about it and thinking about it and wished you weren't alone so someone else could have seen what you saw with your own eyes, and from that point forward you try to convince yourself you aren't crazy and you know what you saw.

But you can't talk about it.
You can't process it, other than thinking about it over and over and over.
And you question if that incident caused you to feel trauma to a certain extent.
And then feel crazy, because how dare you think you experienced trauma, you're probably just playing the victim and wanting attention and it was all in your mind anyway.

...right?


I...
I don't know.
I feel like there was trauma, but who am I to say?
I know it definitely affected my mental health.  And my attitude.  I know this, because it affected my relationship.

Feeling so completely alone and knowing that soon I will have absolutely no one to turn to if that happens again; that this time, at least - even if it was delayed - I had someone come to help me.  But next time?

There will be no one.


Who knew that even if you have someone in your life, that you could still feel so completely and helplessly alone.